Casino games, including slot machine games, video poker games, video keno games or video blackjack games are an important source of income for the gambling industry. Accordingly, casinos (including brick-and-mortar and online casinos) constantly search for new gaming strategies and features to provide additional incentives for players to continue play and to distinguish play at their establishments from competitors in the industry.
For example, as an added incentive to play gaming devices and to increase customer loyalty, many brick-and-mortar casinos offer “slot club” programs to reward players. Each player in a slot club is generally issued a player tracking card encoded with his identification number. The casino awards “player reward points” for the player as he plays in that casino. The “player reward points” can generally be redeemed for merchandise or services at the casino hotel. In many cases, however, these incentives are not sufficient motivation for a player to return to a particular casino since many players join such slot club programs at multiple casinos and most slot club programs offer similar incentives.
Casinos have also attempted to attract or retain players by providing players with prepaid casino cards, wherein a monetary amount is associated with the card and the player that receives the card may use the monetary amount to gamble at the casino. Either a casino or a player may provide the funds associated with such a prepaid card. These prior art prepaid casino cards, however, have also not been sufficiently effective at encouraging players to make return trips to a casino or to attract new players to a particular casino. In the case where the player provides the funds associated with the prepaid casino card, the player may simply cash out any funds remaining on the card at the end of a gaming session and thus have no incentive to return to the casino. In cases where a casino provides the funds associated with a prepaid card, the casinos have attempted to solve this problem by not allowing the funds associated with the prepaid casino card to be cashed out, thus forcing the player to either gamble with the funds or lose the funds. However, the player may simply use up the funds associated with the card in a single gambling session and thus, again, have no incentive to return to a casino.
A need thus exists for a system that sufficiently motivates a player to visit a particular casino and to make return visits to the casino. A need further exists for a system that allows a casino some measure of control over the times at which a player is motivated to make return visits to a casino.